Sunday, December 01, 2013

We were dead set on simplifying our lives...so what do we do? Get two new pets.

This is Pandora, our miniature (or I should say,MY miniature,as my husband can't understand the need for one) and she is adorable.

And in the never ending search for a horse that is quiet and perfect, we found Rio through a friend of a friend of a friend on facebook of all places about 15 minutes away from where we live. He is a 19 year old Andalusian and wonderful gentleman. My husband and he will be perfect partners. Our older horse, Mick, is too arthritic to do trails that are challenging as he was ridden far too hard in his early years. He can do light work, but mostly has become a pasture ornament and a sweet companion.

Life here at Rancho Pintado has become a little busier, but much more fun with each new addition. Expect to see many paintings of these beauties.

Pandora, a sweet black and white with a perfect diamond on her back, and my corgi, zoe.

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Seems lately I have been in a slump. I have 5,000 ideas for paintings but nothing hits me that I really want to paint.

I went out to feed the horses and found the dark feather in my driveway. I looked at it laying there and the way the light hit it, and there you go. You never know where inspiration will hit you. I brought it in. I taped it to my table and went to town on it. I had such a good time painting this, I did another. The first feather is a feather from one of my chickens, the second, found in the driveway is an owl feather.

My husband came in to my studio and looked at them and said, what are you doing? I said that I was finishing up a couple of paintings. He looked and asked me where they were, and I told him that these were the paintings. He laughed and said to me that he thought I had taped feathers to a board.

I guess I did it right.

By the way, I returned the owl feather to our field. I know that it is illegal to keep feathers from wild birds. We have hundreds of them out there. We have redtails that nest in a tree in our North field, owl boxes all over, bald and golden eagles, and hundreds of turkey vultures in the trees across the street. There is no shortage of feathers that are on our property.

Friday, October 11, 2013

I do not like to get political in any circumstance but this HAS to be said.

Did you know that over 75,000 cows and horses were killed last week in South Dakota by the blizzard? I am shocked that I am not seeing this in the news. Miley Cyrus made the news again about her haircut this morning...REALLY?

Write a letter, make a call, tell Congress to get off their butts and put aside their differences and do something. Please take a moment and send 1.00 or what ever you can to help these farmers. The very food we put on our plate depends on these people. I know many farmers in South Dakota who may lose everything they have worked generations for. My heart is truly broken.

Someone once asked me what impression did I want to leave on the world. Most people say to be remembered as kind, or a great artist, or what ever...My answer was, "I want to be that person that someone talks about over dinner." Odd answer, I know. But it came from an evening in Cardiff By The Sea, CA. It was my last night in CA after one of the best summer sessions in college I had ever had. I was sad to go. I was walking on the boardwalk with some classmates and a VERY drunk man stumbled out of a tavern with a water gun and started shooting people. I turned to my friends and said, "Watch this". They moaned and rolled their eyes because they knew me too well. He shot me with the water gun and I went into a huge death scene, right there on the sidewalk. I stumbled into traffic, stopped cars, and collapsed in the street. This guy straddled me, pointed the gun at my forehead and said "Give up the secret plans or DIE!" I shouted, NEVER! and died. He laughed and gave me a hand up and hugged me. He told me that I was the coolest person he had ever met and he was going to talk about me over dinner with his family for years to come.Hence, my answer explained. (quite frankly, I don't think he would ever remember that night because of his level of intoxication, but I digress) My reason for posting this was, a dear friend of mine, who is a storyteller, yes, they do exist, was reviewed in a newspaper article I just read. They said about her...She parks diagonally in a parallel world. What a great description. I was so envious of this that I have adopted it and it will be framed and on the wall of my studio. Angela is a true original and an amazing talent. She was the lead in my very first play, A Runner Stumbles, and she hypnotized me. I was a wee little thing at 18 and she introduced me to a world of street poets, art, literature, opening your eyes and drinking in life. She was the mom I was missing at that time of my life, and I mean that in the best of ways. We would sit for hours on the roof of her Tulsa apartment building and eat mangos and talk of the world and philosophy. She has no idea that I look back on those days as my formative years and I am what I am partly due to those talks. But that doesn't matter. Why do we need to know how we affect people? Not knowing is the coolest thing about being "that guy". You touch people and then you are gone.Go make a difference in someone's life and don't ask why or how did that make you feel. Help someone across the street, help fix a flat tire, pay for someone's coffee behind you...and just pray that they say, "I met the coolest person today" over dinner.To see Angela telling a wonderful story about her growing up click on the following link.https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-J_tsff-x2w

Wednesday, October 09, 2013

I have been getting ready for a show and finishing up my three (Yes, three) calendars for 2015.

This is what I have so far and 7 more on the easel.

As for sleep, what is that? Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining at all. I plug in a movie, put on the headphones, turn off the computer and phone and go at it. I just love it when I get into this mode.

Dinner Time? Pastel

Holding Fast, Oil

Keeping Him Close, Pastel

Pasture Pals, Pastel

On a personal note, things around the house are going well. Despite the fact that my husband has 4 ruptured discs in his back, we have a new horse in the pasture, and the chores seem to keep mounting up. I start my day, happily I might add, at 4 am. Horses fed and pasture cleaned, dogs, birds, cat, and chickens all fed and cared for. Breakfast cooked, laundry going, then by 8-9 get into the studio. Sometimes a little later if something goes awry...which always does.

We have had Santa Ana winds and the fires have kicked up. We lost power all day on Sunday and the internet all day yesterday from various small fires around us.

It seems of late I have become somewhat of an insomniac. I really stressed out about this at first, but then realized I could lay in bed and stress about not sleeping or, embrace it, and get work done. Choosing the latter has become a very good thing. I get more done before sunrise than I used to all day. Don't get me wrong, I still get a good 7-8 hours a day sleep, I am just in bed by 8 pm sometimes. Does that mean that I am getting old???

The weather is turning chillier and it gets down into the 40's at night. The pool is solar heated so it has gone from 88 degrees to 70. I am sad that I can not swim every day, it became my main source of exercise. With the cold, the horses are starting to "hair" up, and I am in the process of winter proofing the chicken coop. The rattlesnakes are finally gone for the year, so clearing out the underbrush is not so scary anymore. It is funny how your perception of season changes alters when you move from Minnesota to California. About now the pool would be drained, caulking and weatherproofing would be done, horse blankets would be cleaned and ready and winter coats and sweaters would be out. What are we doing? Planting grass. Our courtyard in back suffered a serious blow with three dogs who discovered how fun digging for moles is and the damage caused by...well, you know, that thing that dogs do. So our helpmate, Hugo, is laying down landscape hardware to stop the dogs from digging in and the moles from digging out. Then planting grass to grow through it.

I have pumpkins on the porch and we are Halloween ready. Our sugar maples are the most beautiful color right now, and Fall has fallen here.

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Every American can tell you where they were and what they were doing on 9/11. My husband and I were traveling home from Yellowstone and only caught snippets of the news as we went in and out of radio range. It was when we got to Las Vegas and went into a convenience store that we saw what was really happening. All I heard up until then was a plane had hit a tower. I assumed it meant an air traffic controller tower. I had no idea.

I remember every one standing, rapt, in front of the small tv in the store. By then the towers were down and everyone was in shock.

A few years ago John and I visited Ground Zero and saw the Ten House station. The firemen were right across the street from the towers. This is the only surviving fire engine from there. I took a picture of it and it was not until I got home that I realized that you could see the new construction of the towers in the glass.

It was a humbling day to be there and watch as people filed past the monument, saying prayers, leaving flowers, sitting in silence. There was a cemetery across the road from the collapse and the tombstones were black from the fires. There is where I sat and took in the enormity of the incident. Even though most of us were not there, we are all touched by someone or something that happened that day.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

This is stage 1. Below is my posting that I just posted to Facebook. This is a very good cause and I hope that you will consider bidding.

I am moved by the horses in Ramona called the Heritage Herd. You can read about them at my blog at http://foxrunstudio.blogspot.com/2013/08/something-completely-different.html or right here on FB at Coyote Canyon Heritage Herd. Their story is compelling. I am doing a painting of one of the mares and auctioning it off to the highest bidder starting September 1st. 100% of the money will go to the foundation. It will help them for hay, vet, legal fees. If the bidding goes over 250.00 I will also include free framing. Watch as I paint and consider bidding on the painting. It is win win for you and the herd. Please share this.

Friday, August 16, 2013

I don't need to tell you how happy I am in my new home. It is pretty obvious by the stupid grin I wear 24/7. There is so much diversity here in Ramona, and it stretches from the mundane to exciting.

John and I trailer our horses out every weekend to a local trail and enjoy our Sunday mornings on horseback. On the way there we see the remnants of a herd of wild horses that are being cared for by the community. Just seeing them out there is a sight to behold. However, their future is in jeopardy. As an artist there is only so much I can do to help.

Starting next week, I am going to start posting WIP's (work in progress) of a painting of one of the spectacular mares of this herd. She is known for her unusual color, an apricot dun. Proud and free, she represents to me the very thing I love most about horses. When the painting is done, I am auctioning it off to the highest bidder. 100% of the proceeds will go to the organization who manages the Heritage Herd. It will be used for hay, vet bills, legal fees to keep the land they are on. This is a purely volunteer organization and no one is payed. The money will not go to anyone's salary but directly to the horse's needs.

Please consider bidding on the painting if you like it, I assure you that the money is going to a great cause.

The following post is an article about the herd and the history behind them:

I have to share with Ramona the exciting news and history of Ramona's Original Horses! We have a herd that is re-establishing our equestrian heritage right off Highland Valley Road and so many of you have asked about them I thought I'd better fill you in.

The horse has been part of North America since, well, forever. The San Diego Zoological Society believes the horse originated in North America millions of years ago then went extinct on this continent. Horses were reintroduced by Spanish visitors and have also been a part of Southern California for centuries.

My interest in wild horses began when dreaming of the wild horses in my childhood and wild horses in my life became a reality when I adopted Cricket. The Mustang is a decendent of the horses long gone by. In my growing passion for wild horses one of the most exciting things I have found is an effort to save the genetic stock from our area. Yep, horses used to roam right here in and around Ramona.

Coyote Canyon Caballos d'Anza (CCCDA) was established by people interested in preserving the history of the horse in our area, particularly Ramona, Santa Ysabel and Anza Borrego.

According to the CCCDA, wild horses had roamed from somewhere around 1769 when the first Mission was built in San Diego. The missions supplied bloodstock to the local outlying Rancherias, including Warner Ranch just outside Ramona. Horses escaped the Missions and Rancherias and formed bands, or herds, and spread to the mountain and desert areas.

Through the study of history they were able to discern that by 1840, the last great horse raid on Southern California Ranchos was led by Pegleg Smith and Chief Welkara. Three-thousand horses of Colonial Spanish bloodstock were driven into Utah along the Old Spanish Trail. Not until 1974 were remnants of this herd discovered on the Mt. Home Range by the Bureau of Land Management.

COYOTE CANYON HERITAGE HOOF PRINTS"The story begins in 1769 when the first Mission was built in San Diego to bring Catholicism and establish a land trust for the indigenous peoples. The missions supplied Spanish bloodstock to the outlying Rancherias, including the present day Warner Ranch. When Spaniards first visited the hot springs at Warner’s Ranch in 1795 they encountered the Cupeno Indians on a 'Rancheria' located there. To the south and west were the Dieguenos, and north were the Cahuilla’s.

After the Spanish Mexican War, and by 1833, the Indians and ranchos possessed great numbers of horses, cattle, sheep and other animals. Newcomers to the area began maneuvers to acquire these properties, and tragically the Indians were displaced from their homeland. A small worn plaque near the tiny Warner Springs Chapel and Cupa cemetery bears their heart rendering words.

These native peoples and their lands were further segregated from the original trust after Mexico ceded their territory to the United States by Treaty of Hidalgo in 1848.

By 1840 the last great horse raid on Southern California Ranchos was led by Pegleg Smith and Chief Welkara. 3000 horses of Colonial Spanish bloodstock were driven into Utah along the Old Spanish Trail. Not until 1974 were remnants of this herd discovered on the Mt Home Range by the Bureau of Land management.

John Turnbull Warner arrived in San Diego about 1846. He applied for, and was granted, a Mexican grant to the Indian Trust. By 1850 Indian resentment culminated in the Gara revolt and massacre at Warner Hot Springs, when the Indians reclaimed cattle and horses and drove them into Coyote Canyon. For 150 years, even after the Indians abandoned their villages in the canyon, the animals ranged freely as was the custom.

However, by 1984 the Anza Borrego Desert State Parks acquired the lands and removed the last remnants of Indian cattle, and in 2003, the Coyote Canyon Wild Horse Herd. Parks claimed they were feral and invasive. All wild horses have been gathered and removed from the San Diego area, but are returning to Ramona!

Only four stallions remain from this herd. They are listed by the International Equine Conservation nonprofit Equus Survival Trust, as Critically Endangered/Nearly Extinct. (I will introduce them later).

For purposes of genetic recovery BLM sent 14 mares from the Southern Utah herd to be bred to the Coyote Canyon Stallions. The stallions and mares represent a distinct population segment of species that evolved and survived the harshest desert environs and nature’s challenges.

The Coyote Canyon Stallions and mares are held in trust locally by Coyote Canyon Caballos d’ Anza. (CCCDA) a 501 (c)3 non-profit that is dedicated to the repatriation of San Diego’s last Heritage Herd to their native ranges and preservation of historic routes."

Currently there are mares and foals residing in Ramona while plans are made and arrangements sought for more acreage for the herd. I met the mares upon arrival years ago and have much more to come!

Monday, August 12, 2013

I have a hard time keeping up with all the "media" I use to put my work out there. Between a website, a blog, and Facebook there just aren't enough hours in a day.

I know not all my followers are on Facebook, but I tend to post more there than anywhere else. If you are on FB, and want to see more up to date paintings more often, "friend" me.

If not, be patient with this blog. Even though it is important to me I don't get to it often enough.

I hope your summer was a wonderful one, ours was full of fun and sun and getting settled into the new house. I do love it here. The only problem is, there are just too many distractions. Between the pool, the yardwork, the animals (and there are many) it is hard to keep up. Here are a few pictures of our new life here in CA.

Bella enjoying the backyard

Daphne the chicken

My neighbor Emma enjoying a lazy Sunday with our horse, Mick.

The girls and me on OB (Ocean Beach) Dog park. What a great time!

Mick needs a hug, and I need a shower. A long day of prepping their new area and of course working around the old man.

Swiffer gets a hug.

My horse Cadillac takes a snooze.

Where I spend a certain amount of time every day. On a floaty in our infinity pool.

The picture on the listing we saw when we were first looking for a home. It looks very different now! 8 acres of sheer heaven. I don't know when I have ever been this happy.

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

It has been a busy month, well three months, well...9 months, but I am buckling down to get ready for shows and deadlines. I have three calendars coming out in 2015, and they are in the works already. I am also gearing up for a "how to" book. TBA. This is currently on the easel and I am having fun with it. A horse in the water...just imagine it! So unusual for me, I know. But let's face it, I do love to paint the two together.

On a personal note, we are looking at buying another horse, one of ours is getting older and can't handle the trails like he did in the old days, so we are trying out a couple of horses on the weekends. So to add to the workload, I am getting yet another critter. We are in no hurry, so the "test drives" will take some time.

Friday, July 12, 2013

I have had to take some time off here and there to do "around" the house stuff, so I decided to do a few quickies to stretch my wings and get back into the swing. These are both 5x7 oils. I was curious if I could get a watercolor feel with oils and had fun with these.

Monday, July 08, 2013

Where does the time go? The 2014 calendar is done and ready to go. I will not be handling sales from the studio this year as my schedule is unbending and stacked. You can pre-order the calendar from www.calendars.com with free shipping. They will be available for shipping in August.

Get ready for 2015, I will have a songbird, western life, and horse calendar with Legacy Publishers. All products are top quality and made in the USA.

Wednesday, June 05, 2013

Ok, ok, slap my hands. I have been painting, planting, plotting, sitting in my pool...so sue me. Sitting in front of the computer is last on my list. I am about to embark on a lot of commission work so I thought I would do a little painting for me. This is a method of painting called Trompe l'oeil. "Trump Loy" which means to fool the eye. There are many different forms, but this is a standard. I am not proficient at it by any means, but I do have fun breaking out the eensey teensy brushes and working on a painting.
My corgi, Dakota, has the most expressive eyes of any dog I have ever seen. This is her, "I realllllly want that, but I am gonna be cool about it" expression. I was having dinner last week and each time I took a bite I would look at her and she would glance away as if to say, nope...beg...me?..NEVER. I got the idea for this painting from that face.
I hope you like it,
"Give the Dog a Bone" Oil, 5x7

Friday, March 22, 2013

Please excuse my shameful lack of continuing my WIPs of this painting as I promised. But my excuse is a good one. I have been painting hours on hours and too pooped at the end of the day to deal with the computer. I am almost done with this portrait and much farther along than this stage by now. Now it is clean up work and approval by the owner before I post the final.

My next project is taxes, then a portrait of our congressman David Dreier for the City Hall portrait gallery. He is retiring and this is his gift from the city of San Dimas. Then it is paintings for the Western show, Fallbrook show, more portraits...and on...and on.. and on...

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Please pardon the bad photography, but after a long day of painting, looking at a computer screen is the last thing my tired eyes want to do.

Here we see more layering. I laid out a new clean pallete and new paint. I glazed over the underpainting and will continue this until it is done. I push the darks and pull out the lights. I use a liquin medium to thin the color and in the darker areas, I do direct painting with thick brushstrokes.

You will see my confidence grow with each layer and I will get bolder with each layer. In my acting days, I saw an interview with Sir Lawrence Olivier. He said the day he did not get nervous before he went on stage was the day that he quit acting. I approach my paintings the same way...can I do it? How do I do it? As it starts to come together I get bolder with my approach. Don't get me wrong, a good dose of confidence goes a long way, but a bit of humility does too. It forces me to look hard at the subject, ask questions, adjust, and treat my subject with the respect that it deserves.

Give yourself freedom and don't get hung up in the details too much. Remember, you are doing a painting not a photo. Correct things, look closely at the things in the photo that need adjustments. DO NOT be a slave to your reference. Trust your eye, not the photo. A perfect example of this are bears. They have tiny eyes. It works in the photo but not in the painting. I always take a bit of artistic license and make them just a bit larger in my painting, this gives the face a balance and life. Portraits are no different, look at the reference and decide where you need to adjust tonal values, highlights, etc.

I was asked about leaving some construction lines, or pencil lines. Yes, I don't always cover all of them. It is not necessary to cover everything. I learned this from a wonderful artist, Mark Eberhard. It gives the painting a painterly effect but does not distract.

Here is the glazing process. It gives me a "base" that I can build from.

I move from left to right so I won't lay my hand in paint, not that I didn't 1200 times today, but it helps.
I will post more answers to questions (thank you guys, by the way) in the next post.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

I don't take many commissions as I have a hard time as it is keeping up with the galleries and art shows, but I do sneak one in every now and then. This is a portrait of Marilyn and her horse Java.
My past students in classes I have done have asked me to do a step by step so they can follow along, and I am pleased to do it. My process is soooo slow, that showing them this technique is impossible to do in my workshops, so this is the best I can do for them.
1> Reference is key. Marilyn had a professional photographer take the picture and together we chose which one we would use. The reference is wonderful and is going to make the process a lot easier.

2> Laying in the drawing. I do several sketches on paper then move that to the board. Here I am using an ampersand gesso board with just enough tooth to grab the color off the brush.

3> Then glaze glaze glaze. I lay in layer after layer of Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna, Van Dyke Brown, Ult Blue. I push the highlights and the darks as I go, pulling them out with drybrush techniques. Each layer has to dry before I start the next or the medium will pull up the color.

This is the initial glazing stage, I block in the local color and lock in my pencil drawing. As I move from place to place on the painting, I will correct and work on my initial drawing. This keeps my mind active and I don't get complacent that the drawing is "done".

Laying in the base of the saddle. Important here to remember, the face and horse are the focus of the painting, Don't get too lost in detail or you will not give your eye a place rest and it will pull away from the original intent of the painting. (I am one to talk, I am the worst at stopping when I start detail)

Don't rush this stage, it is the foundation of your painting. Once you lay it in, it is a breeze from there.

If you have any questions, please email me directly, I don't always check the comment section of my blog and could miss your question. You should have it from class.

Monday, February 11, 2013

I like this one. The flowers are from a cross country trip through South Dakota, the Robin is from my backyard in Minnesota, and the pump is from "1880 Town" in SD. 1880 Town is a tourist stop in the middle of no where not far from Wall, SD. It's big claim to fame was the horse, Cisco, from the Kevin Costner movie Dances With Wolves...then he died at the age of 33. So they moved on to the Longhorn with the world's longest horns on record, and added a camel. The town is built like a movie set and is full of wonderful little treasures, feral cats, and people in costume that roam around for photo ops. There is a Buffalo Bill exhibit and Casey Tibbs (who is from Ramona, CA) museum plus all kinds of wonderful little pieces of history. I stop every time I pass through and always love my visit. If you ever go through the area, have 12. burning a hole in your pocket, it is well worth your time and a good opportunity to stretch your legs.

This gives you and idea of how I put my paintings together. They are puzzle pieces of my trips around the country put together to make one image. There is a story behind almost every element of my paintings.

I was surprised that the rusty metal of the pump was not the nightmare that I thought it would be. I laid a base coat down, then sponged the texture on the surface, added shadows and glazes and there you go.

Friday, February 08, 2013

I have been working day and night on paintings and on the new barn and corral, taking care of the animals and working with the horses. Last week a small dream came true for me. I have wanted a chicken since I was a little girl. I know, dream big, right? I even bought a laying hen for a dollar for my mom for Mother's Day from the Barnyard's who lived down the street from us. I was 10. My mother broke my heart by making me take her back.

I got my first chickens on Friday and I thought I would introduce them. Not only are they going to give us organic eggs, but will be our pets and subject matter for my paintings. I call them my fluffy bottom girls...

This is Blondie, a Buff Orppington

This is Daphne, a Silkie

Swiffer, a Silkie

Dora, an Australorp

Betty, a Barred Rock

And my soprano, Veronica, another Barred Rock.

My husband is terrified that I am going to become a crazy chicken lady, but I reassure him that when we have fresh eggs, less bugs, and fertilizer for the garden, he will be happy that I am a crazy Chicken Lady!

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About Me

I am an artist in San Digeo, CA. I paint wildlife and western subjects primarily in oils and soft pastels. I will be posting new works and thoughts on work as often as I can. I hope you enjoy the site!